On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, Jean Delvare wrote: > Hi all, > > While I was testing kernel 2.6.30-rc2, I lost one of my USB sticks. The > stick is no longer usable in any machine, all I get is "sdb: unknown > partition table". So apparently the partition table was corrupted by > the problem I hit. > > Here is what the logs have to say about what happened: > > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usb 2-2.2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usb 2-2.2: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usb 2-2.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered. > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usb-storage: device found at 3 > Apr 17 10:48:16 hyperion kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access USB007 mini-USB2BU 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: usb-storage: device scan complete > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 2015231 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.03 GB/983 MiB) > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00 > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sdb: sdb1 So at the time of this log, the stick was working correctly (valid partition table and valid size). > Apr 17 10:48:21 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk > Apr 17 10:48:25 hyperion hald: mounted /dev/sdb1 on behalf of uid 501 > Apr 17 10:50:41 hyperion kernel: FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdb1) > Apr 17 10:50:41 hyperion kernel: fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0) > Apr 17 10:50:41 hyperion kernel: File system has been set read-only Sounds like a bad FAT or directory entry. Could be the stored data was corrupted or a read didn't return the right information. ... lots of errors ... > Apr 17 10:51:55 hyperion kernel: usb 2-2.2: reset full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3 > Apr 17 10:51:58 hyperion kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through > Apr 17 10:51:58 hyperion kernel: sdb: unknown partition table And presumably you now see something like this every time you plug in the stick? > This happened as I was asking Thunar (Xfce's file manager) the > properties of the USB stick. So it was counting all the files and there > were a lot of them (about 8500 if memory serves). As the stick isn't > mine, I have no idea if the file count was correct or not. I remember > that the cumulative size looked plain wrong to me, something like 400 > GB while the stick is supposed to be 1 GB total. > > I would also like to mention that my system had been hit by bug #13135 > one hour before that. I have no idea if this may be related or not: > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13135 > Andrew Morton seems to think that one is a false positive, so probably > it isn't related, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. > > I presume that the USB stick might just have been defective, either > physically or at the filesystem level... It isn't mine, so I can't tell > much about this. But in any case I find it weird that I ended up losing > the partition table due to these errors. The thing is, the log doesn't really show any USB errors, although no doubt something strange was going on. No way to tell what it was, now. It's hard to imagine how Linux could have destroyed the stick merely by reading a bunch of files from it. Most likely this was some sort of hardware failure. If you still have the stick, and if it still is in working condition, you should be able to get it going again by repartitioning and reformatting it. Alan Stern -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-usb" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
